“I am very explicitly in favour,” he added. “I think it makes us do reflect back on ourselves. I think it would be arrogant to think we were the only ones. But in the timeline of the universe whether we will be around at the same time, that is a different matter.”

His warning comes just as every star-gazer with a laptop is chasing a bounty. Tech Times notes that Russian internet billionaire Yuri Milner’s recent promise of a $1 million gift for fresh alien-spotting tech has renewed interest all kinds of contact ideas, especially computer software.